


Crooked Highways

by bonnie_wee_swordsman



Series: Imagine Claire and Jamie Prompts [16]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-15
Packaged: 2019-03-26 13:35:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13858827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonnie_wee_swordsman/pseuds/bonnie_wee_swordsman
Summary: What if Willie had been on the plague ship with Claire in Voyager, rather than Lord John?





	1. Prologue

**Prologue**

****

_Spring, 1767_

_Royal Colony of Jamaica_

**Lord John Grey was more than happy to fling the quill into the inkwell.**  No, not happy:  _ecstatic_ , which was to say  _exhausted and peeved,_  and in such great measure that he didn’t even heed the splatter.

He was due a tot of heedlessness — a double, in fact— after this morning’s onslaught: requisitions, reports bound for London, signatures on an endless slew of disciplinary documents, and, most galling of all, the sugary-sweet, feather-smoothing missives bound for the local worthies (who seemed worthy of very little, in truth, yet required  _the lot_ , if the colony were to stay afloat). 

He closed his eyes and gently rubbed his temples. He  _would_ have to bite the bullet and find a replacement secretary sooner or later, but the notion of sitting through yet another unsatisfactory interview made his head ache.  _No_ , he thought with a sigh, better to suffer through the tedium and cramp than see the work done at half-quality and have to do it over again himself in any case. Perhaps one of the illustrious un-worthies might recommend a decent candidate... 

He was just about to ring Bourne and beg a fresh pot of tea—God knew some sort of stimulant was the only hope of bearing him through the second volley—when the man himself appeared with a timely knock at the study door.

“There is a person,” the butler said, “requesting an audience with you, my lord.”

The noun ‘person’ was spoken most distinctly, in such a way as to suggest that a gelatinous sea-creature had come calling to the Governor’s mansion, one who was currently oozing on the foyer rug and had gone so far as to disparage Bourne’slivery.

Lord John subsumed his grin beneath a mask of calm, earnest dignity. “Did this person give their name, perchance, Bourne?” He wasn’t expecting any visitors today, to his knowledge. Though, not being in possession of a secretary at present, it was anyone’s guess. 

The man gave a prim sort of  _hhmph_ , as if to remind the Governor that, of course, gelatinous sea creatures don’t  _have_  christian names, before reluctantly divulging, “The fellow said that you knew him once as Alexander MacKenzie.”

* * *

**“ _Jamie_!” **

Jamie pivoted on the drawing room carpet, tense and braced for one second of uncertainty... then breaking into a smile as wide as that of the man striding toward him. Instantly, he felt the knots in his belly melt away, letting him breathe again, if only for one blessed moment. At last, in this vast sea of fear and danger and loss:  _a friend._

“By God....Jamie!” his lordship cried again, clasping Jamie’s hand and wringing it. “On Jamaica, of all places??”  

“It’s good to see ye, John,” he said, clasping back with feeling.  “It’s been too long.” 

The moment, that purest moment of relief and gladness, proved to be short-lived. He felt the knots re-knitting, the sinister voices creeping back into the corners of his mind, the practical ones urging him to haste. He stepped back a pace. “You’re well, I trust?” 

John spluttered a bit in trying to find his tongue through his smiles. “ _Yes!_  Very well indeed!” He exhaled, blinking and shaking his head. “Christ, but I could scarcely have been more surprised, this morning.”

Jamie suddenly felt the shame of it all: his vagabond appearance, the rudeness of appearing so suddenly, without first sending word... _the magnitude of all he would be asking of the man, adding to an already-vast indebtedness._  

He cleared his throat and inclined his head with a grimace. “A fact for which I do sincerely beg your pardon.” 

John snorted and rolled his eyes. “You well know it was the pleasant sort of shock. But come, sit!” He led the way to the armchairs. “And tell me at once how the devil you’ve arrived  _here_  of all places! Why aren’t you Scotland?” 

“Tis a verra long tale,” Jamie said, sitting down heavily, “one which I  _shall_  tell ye in full, but the most important fact—confession— is I’ve come for your assistance, which I am sorry to say I require in no small measure.” 

“Whatever you require, it’s yours. Name it.” 

Jamie let the depth of his gratitude show. “I certainly would never have dishonored ye by arriving at your door in such a state—” He waved a hand, indicating his person: sun-burnt and threadbare, wearing a borrowed coat that smelled like goats. “—save that the need is greater. My nephew was kidnapped from Scotland. We’ve made chase and believe him now to be here on the island. I pray he’s alive yet, but I dinna ken.”

Even as he heard John swear, Jamie felt the full force of his fears wash over him in great, stabbing waves. Ian, in the hands of God-knew-what monsters. Claire, on a goddamned plague ship, surrounded by every manner of pestilence and —

_Lord, that she might be safe._

John met Jamie’s eye with zealous resolve. “We  _shall_ recover him, and punish the offenders, whoever they might be. We’ll begin the search at once.” 

Jamie felt his throat tighten. “It had been my intention to seek the governor’s assistance in any case. When I learned the identity of the current occupant of that office—” He smiled. “I could never have dreamt of a better ally in this present trouble.” 

Pale blue eyes twinkled with warmth. “It is my true honor to be able to assist.” 

Jamie nodded and bowed his head, bracing himself for one more request. “If...Forgive me, but if I might ask....”

“No,” John said, quite gently. “Willie isn’t here.” 

Relief and soul-deep disappointment rent through Jamie in the same moment, though he tried to keep both under control. How deeply he longed to see the boy again, and yet, had he  _been_ here—

“But I do expect him to arrive in the colony very soon,” John said, showing the same conflicted sentiments as Jamie over the prospect. “In fact, he is aboard one of his majesty’s warships this very moment, making the crossing with Isobel, and I anticipate that if.....  _Jamie?_  Christ’s sake, what is it??” 

For Jamie had felt his blood chill and leave his head entirely. His hands were shaking and his mouth suddenly dry as bone. 

**“ _Which_  ship?”**


	2. Chapter 2

Spring, 1767

Aboard  _The Porpoise_ **  
**

**I could not speak.** I could not move. I couldn’t allow myself to distantly enjoy the late moon’s light twinkling on the waves. I couldn’t even muster the strength to pound my fists on the bow railing, to unleash an ounce of the rage and despair living within me.

I could only lean my face into my raw, cracked hands, my elbows on the rail. I could remain standing and nothing more.  _I hated myself for it._

Twenty-three lost today alone. Mere boys, most, with their lives stretched out before them. Struck down. Snuffed out. 

And there would be twenty-four tomorrow. 

And more the next. 

And the next. 

A waste. A goddamn, senseless waste of life. 

And beyond the bone-weary, endless demand of the work; beyond the knowledge that I could do absolutely  _fucking_  nothing besides try to keep the disease from spreading; beyond the sheer scale of death bounded by the walls of this floating nightmare, there lay an eerie undercurrent, insidious and unfading. The decorum of the navy and my sex kept away the worst of the overt threats, but I knew they were there. With each day that still more men fell ill— _that I was believed to be failing—_ there were whispers. 

 _Cursed,_ they said. 

For, these were sailors, in his majesty’s uniform or no, every bit as superstitious as those aboard the  _Artemis_. Between the outbreak, the broken rudder shortly after my arrival that had slowed  _Porpoise’s_  passage considerably, and every other bit of bad luck since, the word seemed to be always at my back.  _Cursed.... Cursed....._

 _Cursed, my arse!_ I wanted to scream at the ungrateful bastards.  _I’_ _m here trying to save your bloody lives— against my will, yes, but even so, I’m doing absolutely everything I can to keep you all alive and drill into your ignorant brains how to keep the plague from spreading, and you have the absolute gall to—_

> Just be,  _mo nighean donn._

I clenched my lips tight-shut, feeling the sudden shame of both my self-pity and idleness, my penitent feet starting to tug me back toward the sick bay. 

> No, lass.
> 
> Bide. Take your rest. 

_But I —_

> You’re working yourself to the bone, _as ye must_ , but the work will keep a little while longer. 
> 
> Just be, for a time.

I closed my eyes, surrendering, letting his presence hold me. 

_Alright....I’ll be._

> Be  _safe_ , forbye.....until I can hold ye again.  

_Only if you do the same,_  the ghost of my voice said to the phantom of his, the one that had kept me sane these frantic, agonizing weeks.  _Don’t do anything foolish to risk your neck while I’m away._

A soft laugh. 

> The slander of her. When have I  _ever_?

_When have you *not* will make a shorter list._

I imagined the rumble of his laughter against my back and nape, raising the hairs as surely as the true terror beneath the fantasy. 

_I mean it, though._

> Oh, aye, to be sure, I’ve done a great many heedless things, though I havena been keeping a proper ledger, ken?

_NO, you brute._ My throat was tight with the ache of needing him, of longing to have him truly beside me once more, and of fearing so greatly that it would never come to pass. * _Stay safe,* wherever you are. I can’t lose you, love. Not forever...._ _Not again._

> It willnabe forever....

The whisper of a kiss below my ear. 

> ...and  _aye_ , I promise too, mo ch —

_“MADAME FRASER!?”_

Shock lanced through to every frayed nerve ending and set my heart thudding as I whirled, seeing Benjamin—I couldn’t remember his first name—thundering up the stairs toward me, eyes wide. “Madame Fraser, you’re to come, Mr. Pound says, quick as you can! It’s the governor’s wife!”

* * *

 

**From that first glimpse from the doorway, I would have sworn it was a corpse laying in the berth.**

“Of all the  _stupid—”_ I snarled in disgust at the three women huddled around the bed, all of whom leapt to their feet as I stormed in. “Why the  _devil_ wasn’t I called for sooner?!”

“We called as soon as she—as—The moment she—we—Oh,  _GOD_!” the youngest one sobbed, clutching her shift as she backed away into the corner. 

“You  _dare_ to barge in here shrieking accusations. The  _disrespect_!” spat the sour-faced one with the grey chignon and embroidered robe, loud enough to drown the sound of her ladyship’s moaning, “The  _nerve_ of this—” 

“Hot water!” I shouted over her to Elias Pound, who had just appeared, awaiting orders in the corridor. “Boiled first, and—” 

“ _Already sent for it_ ,” he interrupted, the absolute saintly boy, “while I was about looking for you, Madame Fraser. Water and basins and clean cloths should be here any moment, if Sullivan makes speed, but I didn’t yet have time to have someone go for the alcohol. Shall—?”

“ _Does her ladyship still have wine in her personal stores_?” I barked at the women. “Spirits of any kind?  _Speak_!” 

“Madeira,” the third woman gasped out. “Two casks.” 

“Fetch it. All of it.  _NO_!” I amended, my better sense kicking in as I made my way toward the patient. “Tell Mr. Pound where, and he’ll go.  _No one_  enters or leaves this room again until we sanitize, and someone tell me for  _Christ’s SAKE_ how long she’s been like this!” 

The madeira woman—Agnes, I thought— spoke all in a rush. “She retired early after supper last evening. Said she felt indisposed, but none of us thought anything of it, not—Not until sweet Betsy heard her ladyship crying out from the pain— terrible flux and vomiting and—and a half-hour, maybe a little more had passed before we realized it was m-more than just an unsettled belly, and —” Her voice broke. “ _Please_ , madam, can you save her?” 

I didn’t answer, but I thought I knew. Suppertime would have been less than six hours ago. There were men down in the hold who had been bedridden for  _weeks_  and didn’t look half so wasted-away. The woman wasn’t waifishly-built, and yet her face was gaunt, the eyes deeply sunken, the skin of her fingers wrinkled, as though she’d had them submerged in water for hours. She was severely dehydrated, and the reek of her body fluids in the cabin told me she was becoming more and more so with every minute. 

“You’re  _sure_ she hadn’t been ailing previously?” I demanded, feeling the sickening slackness of the skin under my palms. “In the past days or weeks, she didn’t make any complaints of feeling poorly?”  

“No more than the seasickness and her monthly, madam.” 

“I need more light—” It was still several hours until dawn, and the hanging lantern was bobbing madly on the choppy sea. "A candle, Agnes, hurry.”

My mind was racing. Where had the quarantine broken? Even before I had arrived, the captain had taken no chances of the infection spreading to the first-class passengers, the wife and son of the esteemed new governor what’s-his-name of Jamaica. They’d been confined to their quarters for weeks—Hell, I’d not caught one glimpse even of their coterie in all my time aboard—so how on  _earth_  the typhoid had reached—

My blood went to ice, stabbing outward from every pore in terror and disbelief as I brought the candle near as I dared, praying, silently begging that I was wrong. 

I wasn’t. No red spots on the abdomen..... and in her skin, an unmistakable shade of blue. 

This wasn’t typhoid.  _It was cholera._

_Jesus Christ, have mercy on us._

Typhoid had one virtue, one single, pitiful saving grace, and that was  _slowness_. Except for the most virulent of cases in the most severely weakened, most ailed for at least a week, wasting away inch by inch in prolonged agony before succumbing. As horrific as it was to witness, that meant the cases could be caught early, and theoretically (with resources I admittedly  _didn’t_  have), overcome. 

Cholera, though, was an assassin. It manifested so rapidly after exposure to the bacteria that without immediate, modern medical treatment.... you’re dead in a matter of hours, days at most. 

My palms were sweating, my pulse thundering.  I was vaccinated against cholera, but it was a death sentence for everyone else on this ship. It would spread like lightning, and I couldn’t beat it. Even if the governor’s wife survived—

 _Have mercy,_  I prayed again, the fear rising, and rising still higher, and blackening my vision.  _Have mercy on us._

This couldn’t happen. Not here. Not on top of the typhoid.   _I couldn’t. They would all die._

The voyage  _was_ cursed, then, I thought, feeling the hysteria taking over.I was doomed to remain untouched, condemned to witness as the entire ship was swallowed up by the very pestilence I was powerless to stop; to watch them die, one by one, helpless to—

> You are not helpless, Claire. 

_You don’t understand— this is bigger...._ _This is so far beyond what—_

> Do what good ye can and save as  _many_ as ye can. 
> 
> That’s all. 

I closed my eyes, trying to keep from falling apart. 

> You’re no’ cursed. 
> 
> You’re the only hope they have. 

The door crashed open and Elias barreled in with three others in tow, bearing supplies. Jamie’s trust was the push that got me to my feet, the hand that pressed the fear deep, deep down within my soul, letting me act with a clear head.    

“Mr. Pound, get the alcohol poured out for sanitation. Yourself first, then show the others how it’s done—Hands, arms, and faces, all.” 

There was some brief talk of calling for more soldiers to help, of wakening the captain to keep him informed, but I quickly quelled it. I wanted no one else entering this room and risking spreading the new contagion throughout the ship.  _Contain it_ , at all costs. 

“You two,” I called to the other sailors, “help me shift her ladyship onto the floor so we can strip the bedclothes. And you, open the window, right now. The bedding has got to be thrown overboard, all of it,  _immediately_ , along with all the clothing the ladies are wearing.” 

The women gawked at me, and Lady Margaret, the grey-haired one, made as though to protest. 

“If you want to live out the night,” I said,  _daring_  her to say another goddamned word, “or want your mistress to, you’ll do exactly as I say. Any material that may have come in contact with the feces must go.” 

I turned my back on them, fully trusting Elias to see my orders carried out; sanitizing my own hands and dipping out water; locating cloth; rummaging in a trunk for spare clothing for the women; just going,  _going_ , doing what I could to —

> Your heart,  _mo chridhe._

_I’m fine. I’m doing everything I can for—_

> Your heart....She needs that, as well. 

And for the first time, I truly looked at the woman now laying on the floor. 

She was in her late twenties, maybe, or early thirties. Beautiful, with what surely had been perfect skin twelve hours ago. She was like a rag doll, curled in on herself, limbs and neck hanging lifelessly in futile, tragic contrast with the frantic activity racing all around her. The eyes were alive, though; blue-green, vivid above tear-streaked cheeks; staring directly up at me, pleading. Terrified. 

I was kneeling on the boards, cupping her face, very gently. “What is your name, sweetheart?”

Her mouth was so dry that it physically hurt her to speak. “Iso... _bel_.”

I forced out my own painful smile. “I’m Claire.” I smoothed back her hair, tenderly, as though she were Bree. “You’re going to be alright, Isobel.” 

But with every quarter hour that passed, every tolling of the ship’s bell, she was fading. The near-constant need to vacate the liquid from her bowels and lack of proper bedpans meant she couldn’t lie down for more than a few minutes, stealing all hope of restorative rest.

It had been my intention that the ladies, once sanitized, would leave, going to another cabin for quarantine until we could rule out the possibility of their being already infected with the cholera. Elias and my other trained assistants could help me with what needed to be done for Isobel, I’d said.  All three women, though—from the shell-shocked chambermaid to the frosty Lady Margaret—insisted they would stay and help. Bless their brave hearts, if not their good sense. 

Once I’d gotten cloths bound tightly over their mouths and noses, we worked out a rotation: one woman on each side of Isobel on the floor at all times, supporting all her weight to allow her to stay knelt over the chamber pot.  The strain of the diarrhea on her body was relentless. If we physically supported her, removed every unnecessary strain on her muscles, maybe there was hope of her retaining enough strength to stay fighting. Whoever wasn’t engaged in holding Isobel would be sanitizing, always sanitizing, and most of all, begging her to drink,  _drink—_  just a little more water, Isobel—  _drink_. 

Isobel was trying so desperately to be brave, to control the urges of her body, to drink as instructed, but the body was intent on expelling every ounce of life-giving fluid, and its power was greater than hers, tonight. Her groans and cries were agony, made all the more terrible by the fact she didn’t even have the strength to properly scream when the spasms overtook her. She was like an animal, wounded on the road, with no one to put it out of its misery. 

There  _was_  a brief window, a glorious few minutes near dawn when I thought her color was improving, when she kept down two cupfuls of water and a bit of milk without vomiting, when I  _thought_  she might pull through. She was even managing small, weary smiles, saying something soft to Betsy, a beloved friend in addition to her chambermaid, it turned out, when all at once, Isobel gave a gurgling scream and fell forward.

“Hold her!” I shouted to the women, who all three struggled to lift Isobel back upright. There was blood running down her chin, more and more and still more as she coughed and gagged, bringing up a fountain of it. Something had ruptured, hemorrhaged from the prolonged strain on the digestive system, and there was no way to stop it. 

“Isobel—” I cried sharply, shaking her and trying to get her to meet my eye, to coax down her mounting panic. “Isobel, stay with me, you’re al— _You’re alright—_ ”

But she was choking, unable to control the blood or her movements. She was going into shock, her body reaching the point where there was not enough fluid to keep her organs functioning. Her eyes were dull and slackening: she knew she was going, slipping away. 

“Isobel—NO, damn you, hang on!—Keep breathi—”

 _“...Mummy?”_ came a small, sleepy voice as the cabin door behind me creaked open.  

My own shock was nothing to that of watching Isobel roar back to life before my eyes, rising up to her knees in an astonishing explosion of strength as she looked wildly about. Her gaze locked on him over my shoulder—her son, I realized with a plummeting in my gut—and she choked out his name through a mouthful of blood, her eyes scarlet, wracked with so much and manifold pain—

“ _MUMMY_!!” the boy screamed as he truly caught sight of her.  

“Get him  _out_  of here!!” I bellowed to Elias and the others, remembering at the last second that they had gone for more water. 

And in the  _same_  second, as the last word left my lips and my head whipped around, the ‘here,’ the world, shifted. 

For I saw his face. Saw it, and immediately knew. 

It was seamless and complete, the understanding, with not a single moment of doubt to temper it. I didn’t even need to have remembered the name Isobel had been trying to cry out. 

I’d seen his painting.  _I knew him._

**William.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously, there are both show-verse and book-verse details being pulled here. This AU exists somewhere between the two :)


End file.
